Culture of Corrections: The Experiences of Women Correctional Officers

Abstract

Based on 36 interviews with women correctional officers, we examined their everyday work experiences in the Ontario Provincial correctional system. We used the Psycho-Social Ethnography of the Commonplace methodology to determine challenges and complications women endure in this highly gendered, masculine-defined culture, and the resilience approaches they used to survive. Findings indicate how sexism, hostility, paternalism, and social alienation are maintained and reinforced. Women are repetitively, implicitly and explicitly reminded of their fragile femininity, physical inferiority, and lack of fit. Policy recommendations to contravene the Culture of Corrections’ androcentric nature, and those found in other nontraditional men-dominated work environments, are offered.